James Dougherty was the first husband of Marilyn Monroe, marrying her in 1942 when she was still a 16-year-old girl called Norma Jeane Mortenson, four years before the world had ever heard the name Marilyn Monroe. While her later husbands, baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, became famous in their own right, James Dougherty lived most of his life far from the spotlight. He was a Los Angeles police detective for 25 years, a man who helped train the first Special Weapons and Tactics unit, a husband three times over, and the only one of Monroe’s husbands who knew her before fame changed everything. His story is not just a footnote in Marilyn Monroe’s life. It is the story of an ordinary young man who married a girl to save her from an orphanage, lost her to Hollywood, and spent the rest of his life being asked about the four years they shared.
Who Was James Dougherty?
James Edward Dougherty, known to his friends and family as Jim or Jimmie, was born on April 12, 1921, and died on August 15, 2005, at the age of 84. He is best remembered as the first husband of Marilyn Monroe, but his own life was long and full. He served in the Merchant Marine during the Second World War, spent 25 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, rising to detective, played a part in the creation of the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics team, and wrote two books about his marriage to the woman the world would come to know as Marilyn Monroe. He married three times, raised three daughters, and in his later years lived quietly in Maine, where he taught at a criminal justice academy and served as a county commissioner. He rarely gave interviews about Monroe, and when he did, he always made the same point: he had never known Marilyn Monroe at all. He had known Norma Jeane.
One confusion should be cleared up at the start. This James Dougherty was not a baseball player. There is a completely different man called Jim Dougherty, James Elliott Dougherty, born on March 8, 1968, in Brentwood, New York, who pitched in Major League Baseball from 1995 to 1999 for the Houston Astros, the Oakland Athletics and the Pittsburgh Pirates. He is a different person, born more than four decades after the James Dougherty in this article married Norma Jeane. Any baseball statistics, or any net worth figure attached to the baseball player, have nothing to do with Marilyn Monroe’s first husband. Readers searching for James Dougherty often land on the wrong man, and some low-quality biography sites mix the two lives together. This article is about the Los Angeles police officer, the man born in 1921 who died in 2005.
James Dougherty Early Life
James Dougherty was the fifth and youngest child of Edward and Ethel Dougherty, who were originally from Pueblo, Colorado. His early years were shaped by the hard times of the Great Depression. After the family moved to Globe, Arizona, they suffered so badly that at one point they lived in a tent. The family later settled in California, where James attended Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles. He was a popular and successful student, becoming football captain and class president, and he graduated in 1938 in the same class as the actress Jane Russell.
He was a talented enough athlete to be offered an athletic scholarship by the University of California, Santa Barbara, but he turned it down. Instead, in 1941, he began working the night shift at Lockheed Aircraft, the defence plant that was busy building planes as the Second World War intensified. It was an ordinary working life, and nothing about it suggested that his name would one day appear in every biography of the most famous woman of the twentieth century.
There is a small disagreement between sources about where James Dougherty was born. The most authoritative accounts, including his biography based on the Los Angeles Times obituary, give his birthplace as Los Angeles, California. A few secondary profiles, however, say he was born in Texas and that his family later moved to Arizona and then California. The date is not in dispute: April 12, 1921. The Los Angeles version is used here because it is the one supported by the strongest sources, but readers should know that the Texas claim exists in some profiles and has never been fully settled.
How James Dougherty Met Norma Jeane
James Dougherty met Norma Jeane Mortenson in 1941, when she was 15 years old and he was 20. They had both attended Van Nuys High School, and Norma Jeane was living with her foster parents, Grace and Doc Goddard, who were neighbours of the Dougherty family. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, had been committed to a sanatorium in 1934 after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and Norma Jeane had spent her childhood moving between foster homes.
She was a quiet girl who had already known more hardship than most adults. Dougherty would often drive her home from school, and the two began talking. Their first date was a Christmas dance, and Dougherty later said he found her surprisingly mature for her age, a pretty girl who was, in his words, physically mature and easy to get along with.
The romance began in unusual circumstances. In 1942, Doc Goddard got a job in West Virginia, but state law prevented the Goddards from taking Norma Jeane with them when they moved. The alternative was grim: she faced being sent back to an orphanage or into another foster home. Grace Goddard approached Dougherty’s mother, Ethel, with a proposal that now seems extraordinary but was presented as a practical solution. What if James married Norma Jeane? At first both young people were reluctant, not least because of her age, but they had been dating since January 1942 and they genuinely liked each other. Dougherty later said they loved each other madly and that he felt like the luckiest man in the world. Norma Jeane, who fondly called him Daddy and Jimmie, told Grace that being married to him felt wonderful.
James Dougherty and Norma Jeane: The Marriage
James Dougherty and Norma Jeane Mortenson were married in Los Angeles on June 19, 1942, just 18 days after her 16th birthday. She had been born on June 1, 1926. The wedding was a small affair, attended by her first foster parents, Ida and Wayne Bolender, and her foster sister Nancy Jeffrey, followed by a reception at Florentine Gardens. After a honeymoon by a lake in Ventura County, California, the couple moved into a studio apartment in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. Norma Jeane dropped out of high school and became a housewife, and for a while their life was that of any young married couple in wartime America. Dougherty described her as feisty and funny, and remembered their early days together with real warmth.
Life on Catalina Island changed the marriage. In 1944 the couple moved to Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of California, where Dougherty joined the Merchant Marine and taught sea safety. They spent weekends on the beach, and Dougherty later wrote in his memoir about sitting on the terrace of their apartment, holding hands and dreaming about owning a big home across the street one day and filling it with children. In April 1944, Dougherty was posted to the South Pacific, and Norma Jeane moved back to Van Nuys to live with his parents so that she would not be alone. It was while he was away that everything changed. To help the war effort, Norma Jeane took a job at the Radioplane Company in Van Nuys, a factory making small pilotless aircraft. There she was noticed by the army photographer David Conover, who was taking pictures of women working in the war effort. He told her she was a real morale booster and took her photograph, and that photograph became the first step toward a modelling career.
How Norma Jeane Became Marilyn Monroe
While James Dougherty was serving overseas, Norma Jeane began modelling, signing with the Blue Book Model agency. In 1945 she started to get noticed, and in 1946 she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox. The studio had conditions: it did not want a married starlet who might become pregnant, and the contract effectively required her to be unmarried. A studio executive also reportedly told her that there were too many ways to pronounce Dougherty and suggested a new name. Marilyn was suggested, and Norma Jeane added Monroe, her mother’s maiden name.
Marilyn Monroe was born, and Norma Jeane Dougherty disappeared. The change was more than a name. It was the end of the quiet married life she had shared with James Dougherty, and the beginning of a fame that would consume her.
The Divorce of James Dougherty and Marilyn Monroe
James Dougherty was on a merchant ship on the Yangtze River in China, preparing to sail into Shanghai, when he was served with divorce papers. He later described the moment in words that have been quoted ever since: it was like getting kicked by a mule, and he did not know whether to throw up, jump overboard or kill himself. He was heartbroken.
When he returned home he tried to talk Norma Jeane out of the divorce, but she had made up her mind. She even offered to continue their relationship as an unmarried couple, but Dougherty refused. He was a man of his time and his upbringing, and that arrangement was not something he could accept. After that, the two scarcely spoke to each other except during legal proceedings. The divorce was finalised on September 13, 1946, ending a marriage that had lasted just over four years.
The two of them remembered the marriage very differently. Dougherty always insisted that they had loved each other and that the marriage had been happy until the war and Hollywood pulled them apart. In 1976 he told People magazine that if he had not gone into the Merchant Marine during the Second World War, she would still be Mrs Dougherty today. Monroe, on the other hand, later gave a cooler account, saying that her marriage to Dougherty had not made her sad, but it had not made her happy either, and that her husband and she had hardly spoken to each other, not because they were angry, but because they had nothing to say. She said she was dying of boredom. Both accounts may hold some truth. A marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old factory worker, arranged in a hurry to keep her out of an orphanage, was always going to struggle, and the war and the sudden arrival of fame finished it. What matters is that Dougherty never spoke bitterly about her in public. He kept his grief private and moved on.
James Dougherty LAPD Career and the SWAT Connection
After the divorce, James Dougherty followed his first wife’s career from a distance, and in 1949 he joined the Los Angeles Police Department. He would serve for 25 years, eventually becoming a detective, and he retired in 1974. His police career is the part of his life that most celebrity profiles rush past, but it was the work he was proudest of, and it included genuine achievements that had nothing to do with Marilyn Monroe.
Dougherty played a part in the creation of the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics group, the SWAT team, and became the first officer to train it. That is a remarkable detail that most short profiles of him mention in a single line and then move on from, but it means that the first husband of Marilyn Monroe helped shape one of the most copied policing ideas in the world. SWAT teams are now standard in police departments across America and beyond, and Dougherty was there at the start. He also broke up a plot to kidnap the American actor James Garner, another episode that shows he was a serious detective, not a man living off a famous name. In 1950 he was stationed at the premiere of one of Monroe’s early films, The Asphalt Jungle, to help with crowd control, a strange moment in which his two lives briefly overlapped, with him policing the crowds who had come to see his former wife on screen.
He learned of Monroe’s death in 1962 from a co-worker at the LAPD, and he was heartbroken. He spent that day driving around in a squad car to avoid the press. Unlike Monroe’s second husband, Joe DiMaggio, who visited her grave regularly and sent roses there for years, Dougherty never visited her grave, saying it was too painful. Years later, in an interview with the Associated Press in 2002, he said her death had felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach, that he had almost been expecting it, and that fame had been injurious to her. She was too gentle to be an actress, and she was not tough enough for Hollywood. Once someone starts taking pills, uppers and downers, the way she was, he said, people can go downhill, because they cannot sleep, so they take more and more pills. It was the honest assessment of a man who had known her before the pills and the fame.
James Dougherty Second and Third Marriages and Later Life
James Dougherty married twice more after his divorce from Norma Jeane. In 1947, the year after the divorce was finalised, he married Patricia Scoman, known as Pat, and the couple had three daughters. The marriage lasted 25 years, but it was strained by the shadow of Marilyn Monroe. His second wife was jealous of Monroe and her success, and Dougherty tried to keep the peace by never mentioning Monroe at home and never watching any of her films.
He went so far as to burn all of Monroe’s letters to him. The pressure did not work. When his wife learned that he had appeared on the CBS show To Tell the Truth and spoken about Monroe, she was furious and threw a pan at him. The couple divorced in 1972, with her jealousy of Monroe widely reported as a factor in the break-up.
His third marriage was happier. In 1974, the year he retired from the LAPD, he married the artist Rita Lambert in California. Through the marriage he gained two stepchildren. Unlike his second wife, Lambert had no problem with his past. She was a huge fan of Marilyn Monroe herself, and she encouraged Dougherty to remember and embrace the years he had spent with Norma Jeane. Together they moved to Arizona and then, in 1978, to her home town of Sabattus, Maine. There he taught at the Criminal Justice Academy, served as an Androscoggin County commissioner, and also worked for the Maine Boxing Commission. It was a quiet, respectable second act, far from Los Angeles and Hollywood. He and Lambert were married until her death in 2003.
James Dougherty Books, Interviews and the Marilyn’s Man Documentary
It was Rita Lambert who encouraged Dougherty to write about his first marriage, and both of his books were written on her advice. In 1976 he published his first memoir, The Secret Happiness of Marilyn Monroe, and years later he followed it with a second memoir, To Norma Jeane with Love, Jimmie. The two books are the fullest first-hand accounts of Monroe’s teenage years, written by the person who knew her best before she became famous. They describe a funny, feisty, affectionate girl who dreamed of a home and children, a very different figure from the troubled star of the later biographies.
Dougherty rarely sought publicity, but he did speak about Monroe occasionally in his later years. In a 1990 interview with United Press International, he gave the line that sums up his whole attitude: I never knew Marilyn Monroe, and I don’t claim to have any insights to her to this day. I knew and loved Norma Jeane. He appeared in the 1991 documentary The Discovery of Marilyn Monroe, alongside the actor Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, Monroe’s co-star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and in 1992 he appeared on the Sally show with Russell and Susan Strasberg. A documentary about his own life, Marilyn’s Man, was filmed in 2004, a year before his death, giving him a final chance to tell his side of the story on camera.
One episode from his later years deserves more attention than it usually gets. After the divorce, Monroe once telephoned Dougherty, saying she was bored with Hollywood, missed him and wanted to resume their relationship. Instead of taking her back, he sold their story to a film magazine. Monroe was deeply upset and cut off most communication with him, and she rarely spoke about him in public afterwards. It was a cold decision, and it may explain why she later described the marriage so coolly. It also shows that Dougherty was not simply a passive victim of the divorce. He was a young man who had been hurt and who made a choice that he may have regretted, and it cost him any chance of staying close to the woman he had once loved.
What James Dougherty Said About Marilyn Monroe
The most quoted things James Dougherty said about his first wife all carry the same message: the girl he married was not the star the world remembers. He knew Norma Jeane, not Marilyn Monroe, and he refused to pretend otherwise. He said they had loved each other madly and that he had felt like the luckiest man in the world. He said that being served with divorce papers on the Yangtze had felt like being kicked by a mule.
He said that if he had not gone into the Merchant Marine, she would still be Mrs Dougherty today. And after her death, he said that fame had been injurious to her and that she had been too gentle for Hollywood. None of these are the words of a man cashing in on a famous name. They are the words of a man who had lost someone he loved and who had watched from a distance as the rest of the world claimed her.
That distance is part of what makes his story worth telling. Like other first wives of famous men, his life was changed by a marriage that ended before fame arrived, and then he had to live for decades with strangers asking him about it. Melissa Womer, the first wife of Jim Carrey, and Elizabeth Huberdeau, the first wife of John Cena, both lived through something similar, marrying young men who later became world famous and then having to build a life after the marriage ended. Sonji Roi, the first wife of Muhammad Ali, is another example of a first wife whose story is often reduced to a single line in a famous man’s biography. James Dougherty belongs in that same company: a person in his own right whose life was much longer and fuller than the four years of his first marriage, and who deserves to be remembered for his police service as well as for the girl he married.
James Dougherty Death and Legacy
James Dougherty died on August 15, 2005, in San Rafael, California, at the age of 84, from complications of leukaemia. His death was reported as a standalone obituary in several major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, a measure of how much interest there still was in the man who had married Marilyn Monroe more than sixty years earlier. He was survived by his three daughters and his two stepchildren, and he is buried in Maine, the state where he spent his retirement years. He had outlived his first wife by 43 years and his third wife by two.
His legacy is a complicated one. He is remembered first as the first husband of Marilyn Monroe, and that will probably always be true. But he was also a police detective who served Los Angeles for 25 years, a man who helped create the first SWAT team, a husband and father, a teacher and a county commissioner, and the author of the only memoirs written by someone who lived with Norma Jeane before she became Marilyn Monroe. For anyone who wants to understand Marilyn Monroe, Dougherty’s account is essential, because he knew her when she was still a girl dreaming of a home and children, before the studios, the photographers and the pills. That is the original value of his story, and it is why his name still appears in searches more than eighty years after a 16-year-old girl married her neighbour in Los Angeles.
James Dougherty Net Worth
There is no reliable, verified figure for James Dougherty’s net worth, and this article will not invent one. A few low-quality biography sites claim a figure of around 500,000 dollars, but none of them gives a source for the number, and it appears to be copied from site to site without any evidence.
Other pages confuse him with the baseball player of the same name, to whom much larger figures are sometimes attached, and those figures have nothing to do with this James Dougherty. What is known is that he earned a police detective’s salary for 25 years with the LAPD, retired on a police pension in 1974, and later worked in teaching and public service in Maine. He was not a wealthy man by Hollywood standards, and he never made a fortune from his connection to Marilyn Monroe. Any site that states his net worth as a fact is guessing, and readers should treat such numbers with caution.
Frequently Asked Questions About James Dougherty
Who was James Dougherty?
James Dougherty was an American police officer and the first husband of Marilyn Monroe. Born James Edward Dougherty on April 12, 1921, he married Norma Jeane Mortenson, the future Marilyn Monroe, in 1942, served 25 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, rising to detective, and died on August 15, 2005, at the age of 84. He was the first trainer of the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics unit.
How old was James Dougherty when he married Marilyn Monroe?
James Dougherty was 20 years old when he married Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 19, 1942. She was 16, having turned 16 just 18 days earlier on June 1, 1926. He was five years older than her. The marriage was arranged in part to stop her from being sent to an orphanage when her foster parents moved to West Virginia.
How long were James Dougherty and Marilyn Monroe married?
James Dougherty and Marilyn Monroe were married for just over four years, from June 19, 1942, until their divorce was finalised on September 13, 1946. She filed for divorce while he was serving overseas in the Merchant Marine, and he received the papers while his ship was on the Yangtze River in China.
Why did James Dougherty and Marilyn Monroe divorce?
The couple divorced because Norma Jeane wanted to pursue a modelling and acting career, and her contract with 20th Century Fox required her to be unmarried. Dougherty opposed her career and wanted her to remain a housewife. The war had already separated them, with him serving overseas in the Merchant Marine, and the distance and the new career finished the marriage. Dougherty tried to talk her out of the divorce, but she refused to change her mind.
Did James Dougherty remarry after Marilyn Monroe?
Yes, James Dougherty married twice more. In 1947 he married Patricia Scoman, with whom he had three daughters. That marriage ended in divorce in 1972. In 1974 he married the artist Rita Lambert, and they were together until her death in 2003. Like Monroe herself, Dougherty was married three times in total.
What did James Dougherty do after Marilyn Monroe?
After the divorce, James Dougherty joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1949 and served as a police officer and detective for 25 years until his retirement in 1974. He helped create the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics team and was its first trainer, and he broke up a plot to kidnap the actor James Garner. After retiring he moved to Maine, where he taught at the Criminal Justice Academy, served as an Androscoggin County commissioner and worked for the Maine Boxing Commission. He also wrote two books about his marriage to Monroe.
When and how did James Dougherty die?
James Dougherty died on August 15, 2005, in San Rafael, California, at the age of 84, from complications of leukaemia. His death was reported in obituaries in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. He is buried in Maine, where he had lived in retirement with his third wife, Rita Lambert.
Was James Dougherty the baseball player?
No. James Dougherty the police officer and first husband of Marilyn Monroe should not be confused with Jim Dougherty, James Elliott Dougherty, the baseball pitcher born on March 8, 1968, who played in Major League Baseball from 1995 to 1999 for the Houston Astros, the Oakland Athletics and the Pittsburgh Pirates. They are two different men with the same name, born 47 years apart.
What was James Dougherty’s net worth?
No reliable, verified figure exists for James Dougherty’s net worth. Some low-quality sites claim around 500,000 dollars, but they give no source, and the number appears to be copied without evidence. Other figures online belong to the baseball player of the same name. Dougherty earned a police detective’s salary for 25 years and retired on a police pension, and he did not make a fortune from his marriage to Marilyn Monroe.
